Or, perhaps the GOP could decide to start endorsing crazy initiatives like *gasp* a plan to create JOBS, a plan to repair our crumbling infrastructure, invest in green technology, not to mention a reasonable healthcare system or affordable education.

I know I know, sorry, forgot to take my meds this morning.. I'll stop the crazy talk.

Oh they have all that covered already:
- to create jobs: cut government
- to repair infrastructure: cut government (how that works is left as an exercise to the student)
- to develop green technology: cut government (besides, all that ecological stuff is just a socialist plot to grow the government)
- to make educatiion affordable: cut government
- to improve health care: cut government
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Are you detecting a pattern here?

republicans have passed and floated several plans for creating an environment that promotes jobs. they have all died in the Senate or committee

Infrastructure, you do realize the first subways, bridges, ports, and roads were almost all privately built and then bought out by government?

yet the expansion of federal level of infrastructure investment has lead to the creation of bridges to no where and maintenance costs that exceeds the local, state, and federal budgets to maintain? It also helps that infrastructure investment tends to pander to union labor mmmm

Investment in green tech, this is ideologically driven with returns on investment decades away. In any event the biggest investors in this field are actually the oil and gas industry...

reasonable healthcare system. define reasonable. Again the republicans have presented several plans but have died generally died in committee.

Education, one of the main reasons why college costs so much is that the federal government offers so many loans for education. this has allowed colleges to inflate prices rapidly because they know students can get loans to cover the prices. Much like what occurred with medicare/aid and the Dutch healthcare system when a guaranteed buyer of last resort is in the market, it sets a bottom that constantly increases.

As for below college education this would require smarter practices in part breaking up teacher unions and how school districts are funded, but ultimately comes back to the erosion of the family, which many pressures that gave incentives for its disintegration in lower classes is unsurprisingly correlated to the great American society programs (we can argue causation, but I believe in about 5 causation origins that only work in combination but the initial welfare programs being a keystone).

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A quick look at the timeline in politics shows that the tea party is a reactionary force that appeared in force in 2010. I suggest you consider what happened the prior 2 to 3 years to understand how a reactionary political force that is for the status quo came into being. The antics of Bush 43 started it but to ignore that the tea party is more of a result of chicago style politics in Washington shouldn't be surprising if you bothered being objective.

No, i don't believe the tea party is truly for small government and most of them are not ideologically uniform to paint them in the same colors. Overall, I believe they are for the status quo. in example: They wont touch social security even though it will go bust in 2030 and they wont touch medicare/aid which will go bust this decade. Oddly, the ideas of the democrats would cause these programs to go bust quicker.

I'd rather hear specifics. What exactly is the republican plan for jobs, because I've never heard it (besides the usual repeated neoliberal mantra of deregulation, privatization, corporate tax cuts, etc. which have all failed miserably).

The first infrastructure was all privately built? Absolutely false, take a look at the projects undertaken under the New Deal my friend..

Reasonable healthcare would be something similar to every other industrialized nation in the world, i.e. single payer. Not very difficult.

Welfare has caused the disintegration in the lower classes? Hahaha.. I can tell this is gona be a waste of a discussion already, but go ahead and try and explain that to me.

SS and Medicare will not "go bust", it's a completely absurd notion. The US government can finance any programs it wants, and healthcare and providing for the elderly are certainly programs worth paying for.

Immigration: Expand government, spend billions on fences, drones, trucks, federal agents,repartiation, issue thousands of reculgations so that businesses have to do a full background check on everyone they might employ or be employed by anyone they do business with.

But hell all worth it to keep Jesus and Miguel from taking down away Americas idenity one perfectly manuicured Garden at a time.

@What about Bob: I appreciate your well reasoned response to an equally good question raised by Timshel. Although I can nitpick on certain aspects of your arguments (example one on Green Energy) and such but I agree to your basic premise that the Dems also have shown unimaginable apathy towards governing with prudence and both parties are equally complicit in the debauchery.

"Ultimately the GOP will need to endorse some new policies, but it's also important to attack the politics of impending doom and factional purges as such."

DIA knows this is garbage. The GOP won't convince anyone of anything by assembling a new package of policies. DIA is predisposed to believe the GOP is a collection of racist homophobes who want to push granny off a cliff. No new set of policies will change that.

You take out the conservatives of the Republican party, the Republican party doesn't stand for anything, and there are MANY Republicans, particularly in leadership, that don't stand for anything.

The Republican party needs to stand behind a set of conservative principles and to fight the Democrats in the arena of ideas. The history of "I know nothing" Obama refusing to debate or discuss anything with anyone with a contrary view, but rather having his opponents disqualified, is not an indication that conservative GOP ideas are suspect, but that the Democrats haven't been forced to defend theirs.

Dude, outside the die-hard GOP echo chamber (~25-30% of electorate at most), pretty much everyone thinks they're a bunch of nut jobs who don't like women or minorities.

It doesn't matter if that's true because it's what people believe and will continue to believe until the folks who act like women and minority hating nut jobs (or are just plain crazy like M. Bachmann) are run out of the party.

"Dude, outside the die-hard GOP echo chamber (~25-30% of electorate at most), pretty much everyone thinks they're a bunch of nut jobs who don't like women or minorities."
Tell that to the Democrats that lost their jobs in the 2010 midterms.
Tell that to all the Democrats that are embracing ideas of the Tea Party in delaying ObamaCare now that their elections are coming up.
I might even give you that the Tea Party brand may have gotten trashed. Their ideas... not so much. I suggest that your average person agrees more with your average Tea Partier than with your average Democratic politician.
Tea Partiers will talk about ideas all day long. Democrats, if they're anything like Obama, will shut them down.

"The GOP won't convince anyone of anything by assembling a new package of policies."
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Coming from a family of small business owners, I would very much be open to a (non-reactionary) right-wing pro-small business platform that isn't tied to theocratic social leanings.
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We're not going to get that, of course, because your party has given in to the throes of extremism.

One thing I find tiresome about a lot of discussion of US politics is the reduction of policy disputes down to 'marketing issues'.
So average people aren't upset with the TP over the their idea of the shutdown of the Fed Govt to stop the ACA, its that they are wearing tri-corner hats & carrying 'Don't Tread on me" snake flags.
Other than its ideas what else makes up the TP brand?

The delay of Obamacare isn't a Tea Party idea, the white house came up with it first regarding to the employer mandate, with moderate Repubs suggesting it be extended to the individual mandate as a compromise between the Democratic position (continue with funding the fed govt) and the Tea party idea (stop funding the Government until Obamacare is stopped).
One thing you are right about it that TP's will talk all day.

Nobody serious is saying that the Republican Party should stop being "conservative." The problem is two-fold. First is differing definitions of 'conservative.' Conservative used to mean the center-right, and by that (correct) standard I am a conservative. The problem is that the hard right has co-opted the term 'conservative,'much as fundamentalist evangelicalism has co-opted the word 'Christian,' and I say that as a right-leaning Christian. Second is the very un-American view of how parties work that the Tea Partiers have. We aren't Europe. The only way a two party system, and indeed a republic, works is if each party is a coalition, instead of having a coalition of parties like in parliamentary democracy. Right-wingers need to get it out their heads that a party needs to be an ideologically pure organization espousing one viewpoint and one viewpoint only. Remember Northeastern liberal Republicans? How about conservative Southern Democrats? To see ideological diversity in a party as a weakness is a weakness in itself, and will result in things such as, say, losing the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections. The Republican Party, my party, must reform or die; point blank. Just because our demise hasn't happened over-night leads many to jeer that nothing is amiss, and all we need to do is run a "real conservative" or spout of idiotic tripe about how the majority of the nation must be on government assistance and that's why Democrats win. Pity, that a whole generation will have to rest in peace before we younger Republicans can salvage the situation...provided there's anything to salvage.

"The delay of Obamacare isn't a Tea Party idea, the white house came up with it first regarding to the employer mandate, with moderate Repubs suggesting it be extended to the individual mandate as a compromise between the Democratic position (continue with funding the fed govt) and the Tea party idea (stop funding the Government until Obamacare is stopped)."

When the idea was proposed, the President said that he won't talk with a gun to his head. The president was willing to veto any funding of the government if he had to accept such a notion.

"The only way a two party system, and indeed a republic, works is if each party is a coalition, instead of having a coalition of parties like in parliamentary democracy."

Ummm... We don't have a parliamentay system- we have a system of checks and balances that's designed to keep government FROM acting- not to facilitate government actions. Europe facilitates government power, the US System attempts to put it in a straight jackets. That's why the Dems are so peeved about everything- we're not Europe.

The fact that some people who disagree with you are reprehensible doesn't necessarily prove that you are correct. Any more than the fact that some of the people who agree with you are reprehensible proves that you are wrong. Your behavior has to stand and fall on its own merits, or lack thereof.

There was a time when the Tea Party had a point - that mainstream Republicans had forgotten to be fiscal conservatives. That left fiscally conservative voters without an option - the Democrats weren't going to take up that banner. So the attempt, initially, was to hold Republicans' feet to the fire, to get rid of Republican-branded-but-big-spending-loving officeholders. It actually had pretty much that effect, too - for one election cycle.

How long will this go on? Until the majority of Republican primary voters decide that extreme candidates have gone too far to the right. I presume that such an event is possible; perhaps I'm overly optimistic.

There may have been a time when the Tea Party had a "point" (if you want to call it that), but the timing may not have been worse. What made them think that a demand-driven economic downturn was the best time to engage in austerity and proliferate this fear of deficits (often through absolutely ridiculous and fallacious analogies like, "Think of the government as your household budget!")?
I hold zero sympathy for the Tea Party. Zero sympathy for its origins and its face-value causes (austerity, deregulation, no universal healthcare), and certainly absolutely zero sympathy for its current state and now-obvious causes (xenophobia, total disruption of government, absolute indifference toward the more unfortunate members of society, fundamentalism, Old Testament Christianity, ruining Obama's legacy no matter what that would do to the country).

The Tea Party originated on from a desire to return to the Constitution- you have zero sympathy for that?

To your other thoughts:

- xenophobia-- I suppose... if you suggest that enforcing immigration law is a form of xenophobia and that prioritizing those that break the law over those that follow it is an indication of embracing outsiders.

- total disruption of government- If I recall, it was the Democrats that were vetoing paying for government.

-absolute indifference toward the more unfortunate members of society- you'd be in disagreement with history and Bono of U2. Capitalism improves the lot of the unfortunate, not government regulation or handouts.

-fundamentalism- tell that to the Democratic Party Base and suggest some ideas that go against their views.

-Old Testament Christianity- never heard this term before. Sounds anti-semitic.

-ruining Obama's legacy no matter what that would do to the country- perhaps transform the country- to what? Ask Obama- he'll tell you he knows nothing.

Every time you write nutty flat-earth posts like the one above, you scare moderate Republicans and Independents to the Democratic party.
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I'm starting to think you've been hired by the DNC, but that's a different conversation. :)

Ah, the Constitution. How nice it is to invoke it every time you're trying to justify your political stance. It's funny one of the reasonsw why this nation was created was so we wouldn't be bowing down to a monarch and treating him or her as a deity, but some people seem to revere the Constitution as if it hadn't been written by human beings, but by some omniscient, all-powerful deity.

So, no, I don't hold sympathy for movements which put the Constitution above all for the sake of putting the Constitution above all. So if we, as a society, decide that healthcare should be a right, are we not allowed to just because it's not in the Constitution? If we decide that online privacy should be a right, are we out of luck, because the Framers didn't have the foresight to address cyber-issues?

And I don't know what we would be "returning" to. Without resorting to empty rhetoric, would you care to point out what part of the Constitution we used to hold valid but no longer do that the Tea Party was trying to address? Because nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we need balanced budgets or a debt limit. And Obamacare was ruled constitutional by people who know the Constitution a lot more than you or me, so if rolling back Obamacare is the goal of the Tea Party, I don't see how that would be justified by their regard for the Constitution.

And no, I don't buy for a second the idea that the Tea Party stands for the Constitution, unless by Constitution you mean the phrase, "right to bear arms" with no regard for what precedes it or for what it precedes.

Other thoughts:
-Xenophobia: so what's the justification for the Tea Party push to make English our "official" language? What's the justification for Tea Partiers' continual questioning of Obama's place of birth or his constitutional standing to be President? What's the justification for ignoring every economic argument that has been made in favor of a more open immigration policy?
-Disruption of government: You don't recall correctly, then. Laws are debated while the government is open; that was the argument the Democrats made, and that's the way things have worked for hundreds of years. What if Harry Reid had shut down the government in 2006 on the condition that he won't pass a funding bill unless George Bush had sat down with him to discuss the Iraq War? Would you have held Republicans accountable for (justifiably) not agreeing to sit down with Reid until the government had been reopened? No matter how you spin it, this shutdown was GOP-engineered. 77% of the public is able to see that; why can't you?
-Capitalism and a solid social-safety net are not mutually exclusive concepts. Your understanding of capitalism is incredibly primitive if you can't see that. Why is it that Scandinavian countries score much higher on almost every well-being metric despite not being richer than us (with the exception of Norway)? Hint: because they understand this.
-Old Testament Christianity: ask yourself, did Jesus go around castigating homosexuals; or did he go around healing the wounded and the ill, helping the poor, giving handouts in the form of food and drink, and preaching neighborly love?? Why is it that Tea Party "Christians" seem to completely ignore the New Testament aspects of being a Christian? (There's absolutely nothing anti-Semitic about this. What a ridiculous retort.)

It seems to me that the Tea Party arose more as a response to Obama than anything else, rather than attacking fellow Republicans. All denunciations of Bush and his ilk were/are retroactive. Now being a Republican I know full well that we are not entirely a party of bigots and racists, but I understand where the charge comes from. During the presidency of our first ever white Southern Republican president (H.W. was from the NE, Reagan was a Californian), these people were dead silent. If they objected to anything they kept it close to the chest. Then our first ever black president (and first Northern Democrat since JFK) comes along and all these people lose their minds and catch fire for "fiscal responsibility." I understand the frustration with the left constantly bringing up Bush, but the question and answer goes a long way in discerning the *motives of the Tea Party, if not its sincerity as well. Do I think they're all racists? No. But at the same time, I don't have the answer when the left asks "where were these people when Bush was in?" I don't know where they were. And the Tea Party seems to not have the answer to that question either. Given that, it's no surprise that people have drawn unsavory conclusions.

Your response was so thorough in the dismantling of McGenius' assertions that any rational person would take your responses and learn/evolve from the learnings. Alas, that will not happen, as they do not believe in evolution....

"So if we, as a society, decide that healthcare should be a right, are we not allowed to just because it's not in the Constitution?"

Rights are given by our Creator, not by our government. Rights given by the government can taken back by the government.

"Because nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we need balanced budgets or a debt limit."
It does say that Congress makes these determinations. You reject this?

"And Obamacare was ruled constitutional by people who know the Constitution a lot more than you or me, so if rolling back Obamacare is the goal of the Tea Party, I don't see how that would be justified by their regard for the Constitution."

You believe the members of the Supreme Court were chosen for their knowledge of the Constitution? I hear that Obama is a Constitutional scholar yet he speaks nothing of it other than to trash it. The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court determines it to be. If that were the case you would say if the Supreme Court ruled removing people from their homes and transporting them to prison camps was Constitutional. I would disagree.

"And no, I don't buy for a second the idea that the Tea Party stands for the Constitution, unless by Constitution you mean the phrase, "right to bear arms" with no regard for what precedes it or for what it precedes."
Do you care to explain what a militia is- perhaps you think its the National Guard's F-16 Fighter squadrons?

I can't help myself- the rest of your post is just so dumb. And the people that recommended it indicate a failure in society.

"so what's the justification for the Tea Party push to make English our "official" language?"
You suggest "official" languages are bad, especially when they're the languages in which the laws are written in and failure to master such a language puts an individual at a severe handicap in society? Where are you going with this? Do you suggest people to not worry about learning English?

"What's the justification for Tea Partiers' continual questioning of Obama's place of birth or his constitutional standing to be President?"
Not sure it's the Tea Party doing this. Go ask the Clintons- they're the first to bring it up.

"What's the justification for ignoring every economic argument that has been made in favor of a more open immigration policy?"
Who's rejecting an open immigration policy? Or, are you speaking of open borders? Do you have open borders in your home, does Obama have it for his, or do you just suggest this for your country?

"What if Harry Reid had shut down the government in 2006 on the condition that he won't pass a funding bill unless George Bush had sat down with him to discuss the Iraq War?"
The GOP didn't shut down the government. The Senate refused to vote on a spending bill from the house. I think that means the Democrats were shutting down the government, don't you think?

"Would you have held Republicans accountable for (justifiably) not agreeing to sit down with Reid until the government had been reopened?"
Reid refused to sit down. The president militantly said a gun was being put to his head and proceeded to play golf. Further, most of the government wasn't shut down.

"Capitalism and a solid social-safety net are not mutually exclusive concepts."
That solid social-safety net requires capital from the capitalists. Kind of hard to be a capitalist when the government keeps taking your capital.

"Old Testament Christianity: ask yourself, did Jesus go around castigating homosexuals; or did he go around healing the wounded and the ill, helping the poor, giving handouts in the form of food and drink, and preaching neighborly love?"

Didn't know the Tea Party had religious views but since you're injecting them- that being said... what are you getting at? Are you suggesting that people should donate more of their own personal wealth and are angry about Obama's paltry donations, or perhaps you wish Caesar taxed more? You must be angry that Caesar didn't tax enough, because you must believe that Jesus was running around screaming for greater taxes. And that's nuts!

The picture above really captures the fissure in the Republican Party. Ted Cruz chose the moment that Mitch McConnell was speaking about the deal to reopen the government to announce that he wouldn't hold up the deal. It is interesting timing, and one that spoke volumes about the Tea Party's respect for the old establishment.

The Republicans will pull themselves out of the tailspin around January 2017, when their nemesis is no longer President. I think once another President is elected, some really hard choices will have to be made (e.g., what do we really stand for now that we have no one to stand against?) I hope at that point, this purity nonsense will diminish, if not fully dissolve. I wonder if the Tea Party can survive without it's socialist foil; I doubt it.

A new administration will be an interesting test for the Tea Party. It's hard to see how it has legs as an organised movement, but far be it from me to try to predict politics a week from now, let alone four years.

Barack Obama is no socialist; by European standards he is centrist. Transplant him to the UK and his policy positions would fit better in Cameron's Conservative party than in the left-leaning Labour party.

But then I guess even Reagan was a socialist by the insane standards of the tea party crowd.

"The Republicans will pull themselves out of the tailspin around January 2017, when their nemesis is no longer President."

The original nemesis was G Bush.

I think it's clear what the Tea Party is for- limited, constitutional government. That such an idea is held in utter contempt says more about the Tea Party's critics than it does say about the Tea Party.

I'm not sure 2017 is when they'll pull out, especially if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. If she wins, which is a distinct possibility, it will combine the GOP's hatred of all things Clinton with a sizeable portion of the hardliners who don't really like women that much (the can't get pregnant from rape crowd).

Then again, if they lose the House in 2014 or 16 along with the Senate and presidency, you might see the GOP split into two parties - the adult establishment who wants to accomplish things and the kids who just want to tear things down. Kicking out the extremists is the only way the GOP stays relevant in 20 years.

"I've yet to hear a compelling argument as to why Barack Obama should be considered to be significantly to the left of center, even in the very much right-biased spectrum of American politics."

It's not that you haven't heard anything, it's that nothing said will convince you beyond what you're convinced of.

Flip it- convince me his faith in capitalism and the free markets? Convince me of his faith in the individual?

And the moment you start speaking "He believes in the markets in the context of what the government wants", or "he believes in the individual in the context of the needs of the greater society", or other such gibberish, then there's your answer.

Another way to phrase it is that some members of the Republican Party (e.g. Mr Ponnuru and Mr Lowry) are looking for a way out of the death spiral that the GOP is currently in. Indeed, some of us (having the "benefit" of watching the process in California, where it has been going for a couple of decades) have been saying similar things for quite a while.
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What it comes down to is that you can't convert more people to your point of view if you condemn anyone and everyone who disagrees with you in the slightest. Which is what the focus on theological orthodoxy and purity that characterized today's GOP is all about.
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But then, for some people feeling virtuous and (morally) elite) is far more important than actually accomplishing something. To the point that anyone who does accomplish something is automatically suspect.

"Each shift produces apostates who can be purged on the basis of previously holding positions that have now been revealed as incorrect, and this provides opportunities for advancement to lower-ranking members..."

This looks to be correct. It also sounds like a description of the turmoil in the USSR between the revolution and Stalin's death and of Communist China before Mao's death. How frightening.

That is a simplification; there are factions within those one-party systems (then and now), just as there are factions within both the parties in the US. The system you see in many European countries where they have a separate party for each major faction and require them to campaign separately and then form a coalition government makes much more sense to me - its more democratic and you can vote specifically for what you want. But the two-party system is deeply entrenched in the US and unlikely to change soon.

I've never understood how the dysfunctions of U.S. cities are supposed to be linked to national politics, beyond the logic of Party A bad Party B good. Did Detroit or Chicago offer more entitlements than other cities? Did they provide more public services (deal with services in Detroit at all and you'll see how laughable this idea is, I've never heard that it was much different)? Is their unionization rate any higher than that in cities that work?

While I've read the OMG America will become Detroit if you elect Democrats about a million times on Conservative websites I've never seen the critique directly made between Democratic policies at the municipal and national level and how these policies are linked to the fate of these cities. I have no doubt that single party machines cause a great deal of extra corruption but this is fairly low down on the scale of these cities problems. For Detroit, at least, the main problem is dependence on a single industry combined with incompetence at the senior management level in that industry. The second major problem is white flight, particularly when combined with the balkanization of the metro area into small fiefs where each tiny municipality wants to make sure no other municipality (primarily, but not only, Detroit) has any chance to tap local residents incomes to provide public goods to the metro areas as a whole. After that the problems become arguable, but the only policy identified with Democrats that seems to have much of anything to do with Detroit's decline is unionization and that doesn't seem like a big issue since states like New York work pretty well despite a much more obvious union presence in government than Michigan has.

So what specific policies were implemented in Detroit that you associate so strongly with its decline, and why are these bigger issues than more obvious problems like income segregation between municipalities and incompetence in the Big 3?

The answer to your question is that there are no specific policies that can be pointed directly to the Democrats. Part of it is a cheap shot that echos well in the chamber, and part of it is rural Southern/Western antipathy towards cities (especially Northern ones) that has been going on since we first started urbanizing 120 years ago. That antipathy spawned economic/political movements like the Populists in the late 19th century, and moral/social ones like fundamentalism in the early 20th century. It has never truly gone away. De-industrialization and the movement of jobs and tax bases out of inner cities beginning in the early 1950's are practically the only culprits of urban decline, especially in my native Midwest. Discussion of anything else is just details appended to a larger trend.

Or that the cities are cherry-picked to fit their Democrats=bad narrative. Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Boston and Seattle, among others, are also cities/regions long run by Democrats in something approaching a one-party system. And those cities just so happen to comprise some of the wealthiest and most succesful places in the country, but never mind that - let's focus on Detroit!

"I've never understood how the dysfunctions of U.S. cities are supposed to be linked to national politics, beyond the logic of Party A bad Party B good."

So your understanding between the two parties is that their underlying principles on governance is the same except on the national level? You mean, after all of Obama's crowing about how the Republican party leaves people to the mercy of the markets, you only thought this was a national political distinction and everything else was the same below that?

I'm sorry, you leave me speechless. I don't know what else to say? I just assumed people thought/knew there was a fundamental and principled difference in the way the two parties approached governance. Despite your readings, you missed that distinction. I'm sorry- I was wrong.

I'm well aware of their underlying philosophical differences, but this is neither here nor there with regards to my question.

Again, I ask, what are the concrete policy differences which you associate with Democratic governance at the municipal level and what do these differences have to do with their national politics? All I see is you avoiding my question by vague handwaving about fundamental and principled differences.

I even got you started with the acknowledgement of unionization as a real municipal level difference that is congruent with national policy, what I don't see is that this is a large enough difference to explain outcomes particularly since there are plenty of successful cities with high levels of municipal unionization. How about you build on this rather than referring to fundamental and principled differences which may or may not lead to concrete differences in outcomes.

"Again, I ask, what are the concrete policy differences which you associate with Democratic governance at the municipal level and what do these differences have to do with their national politics?"

The difference is a focus on keeping taxes low and government regulation down. Any time somebody has a bright idea to raise taxes and spend money, it's putting the burden on them rather than the burden on those that don't want their taxes raised. It's why Texas is growing in population and the leftist states are dropping in population or stagnating- people move with their feet. It's why people move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.

What you're looking for is a collection of policy packages and promises and other garbly gook to spend money that Democrats come up with every election cycle. That's Democratic party corruption for divvying up the spoils of the treasury and handing it out to their constituents. That does not and should not have any meaning to a Republican.